project

Garden

location

Toronto

client

Carter Architects Inc. and CAMH

Installed

Completion Spring 2023

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As part of Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital (CAMH), this garden provides an accessible and restorative backdrop for the Centre’s Aboriginal Services’ Sweat Lodge and Ceremonial Space. The Indigenous-lead practices that will take place in this garden offer patients “the opportunity to engage in a form of therapy based on the values, beliefs and traditions of Aboriginal peoples.” (https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/camh-opens-aboriginal-sweat-lodge-for-patients-584114281.html). Established in 2016, the sacred ceremonial space was recently relocated to a new area of the CAMH campus. The new surrounding gardens, comprised of locally quarried stone and primarily native forest species, provide an accessible and beautiful environment intended to compliment the sacred sweat lodge and traditional healing space built and cared for by Aboriginal Services at CAMH. The Forest garden was designed to soften the institutional surroundings with lush plantings. The plant palette consists of a mix of native trees including White cedar, Sugar maple, Blue beech, Witch hazel, Redbud, and Ironwood. The shrubs and perennial ground cover consist of Purple flowering raspberry, Fragrant sumac, native fern species, Wild columbine, Zig zag goldenrod, and False solomon’s seal.